Star Wars with occasional sarcasm

Young Indy Volume 1 DVDs released; Interviews with George and Rick on Young Indy

DVD Tuesday brought the release of the first volume of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones on DVD, a 12-disc set with 7 feature-length episodes and wads of documentaries and other bonus features.

As previously reported, this is the first of three DVD sets which will contain the entire series, which aired in the early 90’s as the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and then released on video in the late 90’s. This first volume contains the first 7 episodes in chronological order, which covers all the episodes with nine-year-old Indiana Jones, played by Corey Carrier, as he travels the world with his parents and tutor, as well as some of episodes with teenaged Indy, played by Sean Patrick Flanery, as he ditches high school to get caught up in various adventures in 1916, before getting into World War I. As with the late 90’s videotape release, the original YIJC TV show episodes have had their bookend segments removed (where an older Indy, usually played by George Hall, reminisced) and stitched together two TV episodes into one longer episode, with some bridging material filmed later to help join the episodes into one story. Does anyone miss the bookend segments besides me?

The Baltimore Sun has an article and a blog entry talking up the Young Indiana Jones DVDs with an interview with George Lucas. Lucas talks about how the documentaries connect to the episodes’ content – “to bring history to life”.

I personally loved the “Old” Indy bits so I’m rather put-out that they’re not there. I just really liked the idea of visiting a museum & bumping into the person who gave the artifact to them & the story behind it. And I wanted to find out how he lost his eye!

I liked the Old Indy framing device. It was nice to know that nice to know that Indy was still around in modern times. And it was a way of telling youngsters, “Y’know that old person that you just ignore and consider unimportant? He might just have been the greatest adventurer of his time.” I wanted to know how he lost his eye, too.

I have mixed feelings about the Old Indy bits. George Hall never seemed to properly capture Indy’s essence for me, so I can see why they got yanked. On the other hand, one of my favorite moments of the series is when, after Indy tells someone a story about a girl he had met, he runs into that girl at the end of the episode. Corny and straining credibility, yes, but it managed to be a neat moment despite that, and I’ll regret not getting to see it again if I ever find these DVDs on sale sometime.

one of the problems with the Old Indy bookends is that they would tend to date the series, since the George Hall ones tended to focus on the present time (when the show was shot) and keyed in onto Indy’s lifespan. now, 15 years later, if the bookends took place in our present day, Indy would be quite the active centenarian. and they did often wrap up the story sometimes – as in the case jSarek mentioned, when Old Indy runs into Old Vicky from England 1916 when he overhears her say ‘Deeds not words’

and of course, not all the episodes had George Hall playing an older Indy – Harrison Ford played a 1950’s Indy in the Mystery of the Blues. and i think Sean Patrick Flanery even framed a story involving Corey Carrier.